Category : How To

As an entrepreneur, one of the most powerful weapons you have in your marketing arsenal is your own personal story. What do I mean by this? Well, on your website, your personal story should be crafted and conveyed in such a way that it appeals to your target consumers, allows them to relate to you and your business, and prompts them to take action and purchase your product or service. Remember, products don’t sell themselves. It is up to you to convince consumers that your product and your business are worthy of their money, and a compelling story is one of the ways in which you can do this. How can you make the story that you’re telling effective and engaging? Consider one of these storytelling models:

The Person-Driven Story:

This is the most common and what I use on my website About Me page. In the person-driven story, sometimes also called a personal story, an entrepreneur will detail his or her own personal journey to entrepreneurship. This will typically detail a painful, difficult, or challenging problem that an entrepreneur faced and then explain how the entrepreneur was able to conquer the challenge. There are a number of ways to maximize the appeal of this story. First and foremost, you want to make sure the challenge resonates with your target consumer. In other words, the symptoms, difficulties, or pain you experienced should closely mirror those that the target consumer is likely to be experiencing. For example, if you are selling a supplement to help combat male baldness, you will want to detail your experience with the problem — the insecurity it caused, the toll it took on your personal relationships, your lack of confidence, etc. If the target consumer can identify with the difficulties and challenges you faced, he or she is more likely to buy into your solution. This kind of story is all about facilitating an emotional connection between the entrepreneur and the target consumer.

The History-Driven Story:

The history-driven story is all about research. It will typically detail the history of a particular product or service. For example, imagine you are opening a massage parlor. You might detail the long history of massage, emphasizing its ancient origins and world-renowned healing properties. You then situate yourself and your business as the culminating moment of ever-evolving historic, ancient tradition. The idea is to make your product or service sound exciting, relevant, and worthwhile using history.

The Guru-Driven Story:

A variant of the personal story, this focuses on a problem an entrepreneur faced and the “guru” that helped him or her to overcome the problem. Like in a personal story, you will want to focus on a painful, difficult, or challenging problem that you faced and the debilitating symptoms of this problem. However, in the guru-driven story, the entrepreneur doesn’t come up with a solution to the problem. Rather, he or she turns to a guru for help, and the guru leads him or her along the path to a solution. Endowed with the wisdom and the insight of this guru, the entrepreneur is now here to help individuals who are facing the challenge that he or she once faced. This helps to boost credibility with the target audience, facilitating a connection.

Keep in mind that these three models are just suggestions. Whether or not you use one of these storytelling formats, keep in mind that a story that sells will always facilitate a connection with the target consumer. It’s powerful connections that ultimately work to sell products.

Never underestimate the power of stories. If you need help crafting your story, apply for a Strategy Sessionso you can be on your way to selling more products/services.

When it comes to establishing your brand’s purpose, an effective tagline is absolutely key. So, how do you know if your tagline is up to par? An effective tagline should be memorable. It should clearly, concisely, and fluently explain your brand’s purpose — what you do, who you do it for, and how you do it. It gets your message out in a way that is both crystal clear and very powerful. The goal is to drive consumer action, to facilitate engagement and interaction between your target customer and your brand. To create the perfect tagline, be sure to keep the following points in mind.

Keep it simple.

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough,” Albert Einstein famously proclaimed. Don’t make readers guess about your brand. Lay everything out clearly and concisely, in language that is simple yet engaging and compelling. Avoid overly complex or highly technical language. After all, a tagline should be something that the average Joe can clearly make sense of.

Give it a rhyme or a rhythm.

If possible, make use of phonetic devices, such as rhyming or alliteration. This will make your tagline easier on the consumer’s ear, and it will also ensure that your tagline is more memorable. Bounty’s tagline, “The quilted quicker picker upper,” for example, makes use of alliteration in order to give the tagline a euphonious sound. Research consistently shows taglines that make use of these kinds of phonetic devices are remembered significantly better by consumers.

Maintain a smooth flow.

If you’re struggling to construct a coherent tagline for your brand, try out the XYZ format: I help X do Y so that Z. The X part of the statement refers to your ideal client. It explains whom, exactly, your brand helps or serves. The Y portion of the statement refers what your brand does, the result, outcome, or transformation your service or product provides, while the Z briefly details the specific benefit that this provides. XYX statements are a great way to keep things simple and to the point. Here’s a sample: I help moms that are struggling to lose 20 pounds stick to their exercise routine and slim down to their pre-delivery weight.

Tell a story.

One of the most effective ways to build rapport with your readers is to tell them a story. Stories have the capacity to entertain, to illicit emotion, and to provoke thought. Readers are also more likely to remember content that is constructed to tell a story, an invaluable advantage when it comes to constructing effective taglines. However, a word to the wise: Don’t go overboard with storytelling. Remember to keep taglines simple, concise, and easy to follow.

Use verbs, not nouns.

Actions words (verbs) almost universally catch a reader’s attention more quickly and more effectively. This is especially true on social media sites, where verb-rich content tends to garner substantially more likes and shares. For example, in an extensive study of well over 20,000 tweets, researcher Dan Zarrella found that tweets with more verbs and adverbs has significantly higher click through rates (CTRs).

Test.

Now it’s your turn. Go ahead and create a few to put there and ask for comments, suggestions and even help. Just make sure it’s effective and memorable.

The honest truth is this: there are already loads of people out there searching for your product
or service, who want, and desperately need what you have to offer. They are waiting to hear your special message so it’s important you get it out there and be found.

That’s good news, right?

So why is it then when you take a look at your business, you hear crickets? Why aren’t you
attracting even a third of those people? Why aren’t they banging on your door
screaming ‘Give it to me’!?

Is it because the copy on your site doesn’t appeal to them or it doesn’t hit their pain points
strong enough? Or both? Once you determine who your ideal client is and what’s keeping
them up late at night your website copy should have them saying,
“hey that’s me, I need to find out more!”

To build a thriving business, it’s your mission, your responsibility, and your duty,
to do everything you can to understand your ideal customer.

Understanding your client is the key to serving them better. You also need to give direction
to the customers that haven’t signed up yet, because a confused mind doesn’t hit the buy button
and your bank account needs some love.

So how can you achieve this?

Enter: Getting up close and personal with your ideal customer.

Understanding your ideal client profile will be the basis of all of your marketing efforts.
It’s this profile that will hold the key to ensuring every single thing you write or produce
will have them coming back and wanting more.

Who are they and what are they looking for? Are they single, or couples in their mid-forties
looking to relocate abroad? Are they 30-something men looking for love? Are they single female dog owners looking for the perfect bobble hat for their Chihuahua’s?

Whoever they are – you knowing them better will help them find you more easily.

Get to know them and make this your top priority. Because if you don’t know what they want,
how on earth are you going to know what to give to them?

So now that you know what to do, let’s see how to do it. How exactly do you get from being
clueless about your ideal customer profile to being 100% crystal clear?

Let’s look at the 3 key steps:

Step 1: Take Notes

Pick a market and serve it. Get specific. Get under their skin. Start writing down what they’re about.

Use this list as a guide:

Gender

Age

Income level

Ethnic background

Occupation

Location

Marital status

Education level

Parent (or not)

Skills

Interests/hobbies

Hope, fears, dreams

Now make a list of all the problems they have that your service or product will solve.

Are they struggling to decide on their next career move? Are they looking for a coach? What are
their 3 top challenges right now?

By gathering detailed information on the habits and wants of your target market, you can create
an ideal ‘client profile’ that you can use as a model for your marketing efforts. Give it a name
along with a gender, this will make you feel connected and the profile real. Repeat this process
should need a second ideal profile but remember don’t go broad; keep your target niche narrow and deep.

Because once you’ve clearly understood the needs of a single, 32 year old, tattooed woman living in Denver with a desire to build her online empire and you serve her well, she’ll refer you to other 32 year old, tattooed single women looking to build their empires online. She will tell
everyone about her successes and spread the word about your services. A happy customer
can be your best marketing!

And the success of your business can happen quicker than you think.

Note: The downside to not having a target market is that you will be running around in circles
and won’t get the results you want from all your marketing efforts.

Step 2: Next Up Research

Your assumptions will only get you so far. Now it’s time to dig a little deeper. At this stage, you
don’t even have to talk to anyone. All you have to do is observe what your ideal customers are saying.

Despite the Internet being rather public, people have a desire to be very honest when they write.
Go to several forums and start observing what your ideal client is asking – what their pain points are
– and you can weave the answers into your services.

You may be asking, “How do I find all this information?”

Give these a try:

Quora sights itself as the best place for knowledge. In its most simple form, it’s a place for questions
and answers. Here you can find what questions your ideal client is asking, discover their challenges.

LinkedIn forums are not only for career-related topics. They’re full of groups your ideal client has joined.
Join the groups and add to the discussion. They will soon see you are the go-to expert and visit your
profile so make sure it is up-to-date!

Reddit – not only a source of entertainment – Reddit makes conversation easy. Search for the words
your ideal client uses to describe pain points and there’s a world of information just waiting to be found.

Blogs of your competitors are also a great place to find your ideal client hanging out at (not for much longer though!). If you have a list consider conducting a survey of your own.

Step 3: Determine Their Personality

Getting inside your ideal client’s mind and understanding how they think is crucial. Gather personal characteristics such as how and when they will use your product or service, what media do they read and on what platform, how much they will spend, do they buy online or on their cell phones, what are their values…

After you’ve decided on your ideal client profile and target market, consider a few of these questions:

• Are there enough people that want my product or service?
• Will they really benefit from my product/service?
• How much are they willing to pay?
• Can they afford my product/service?
• Where are the best places to market my message?

I know defining your ideal client and target market can be a difficult and confusing task. If you need more help go to http://ExpertNicheAcademy.com where I dig deep and provide all the help you need.

So, now it’s over to you. How do you find your clients and what are you going to do to nail down your idea customer profile? I look forward to reading your answers in the comments below!

If you want to learn how to become a twitter expert then follow my free guide and you will be on your way to growing your business.

Twitter is my favorite platform to connect with tweeps (people) from all around the world. It doesn’t consume a lot of time because a tweet is similar to a text message, up to 140 characters long.

Your tweets can include a link to your blog posts, website, Facebook page, Pinterest profile, sales page, photograph, video or what ever it is you want to promote. Today there are several tools that make it easier to schedule tweets, analyze stats, create original photos, inspirational quotes and more to save you time. It’s is an effective platform if used correctly to generate more traffic to your website or sales page.

#TwitterTip: By placing your link 25% of the way into your tweet it will get more clicks. #Sweet!